CH.7 — Some Help From Waldspurger

It’s almost time for camp. Not the fun kind. The Army’s kind.

Senior Drill Sergeant Robison sits us down for some prepared remarks.

“The next step of your training is the bivouac. You will march a distance of 12.6 miles in full gear. You and your buddy will share a tent using your respective shelter halves. Your excretory functions will take place in a cat-hole latrine dug one foot below the ground. You will do this. There will be no goddamn pissing on some goddamn bush. During the march, you will be tear-gassed and shot at. It is just make-believe, OK? Do not charge into the woods trying to kill ’em like those two dicks from the last cycle. If you charge into the woods, I will kick your goddamn ass. Meals will be C-rations. You are not to be in possession of food. Possession of unauthorized food will result in disciplinary action.

“The following personal items are approved for bivouac: Toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, washcloth, foot powder, lice powder, insect repellent, socks and shoe polish.

“The following personal items are not approved for bivouac: Tape players, dice, playing cards, marijuana, fuck books, butcher knives, beads and bitches.”

We laugh. He doesn’t.

“Two cycles ago, some guy sneaked a chick into the tent. He was halfway through banging her when he got called out for guard mount.”

Uh, OK.

“You will have your M-16s at all times. You will place your M-16 in the tent in such a way that it does not sustain water damage. If your M-16 sustains water damage, I will kick your goddamn ass.

“You will dry-shave in your steel helmets. The whiteness of lather can give away your position to the enemy. If you give away your position to the enemy, I will kick your goddamn ass.

“Any questions?” Robison thunders.

We’re all concerned that a long march with 40-pound packs will leave us with curvature of the spine, but we decide not to bring that up.

Skebo agrees to be my tent-mate. We’re given 15 minutes to prepare our gear. I need every second. Fill up the canteen. Clip on the ammo pouch. Tie off the galoshes. Tie off the poncho. Squeeze in the shelter half. Sneak bags of M&Ms in pants pocket to eat on the way. If Haddox catches me, I’ll say it’s the latest in lice protection.

I feel like I’m carrying a half-dozen cannonballs. If I ever get started, it’s going to take me a football field to stop.

Skebo looks like a stuffed bear that lost its insides at pre-school, and the 4-year-olds desperately tried to put him back together before nap time.

Ya takes a final drag on his cigarette.

“Shit, I didn’t even like walking home from the bus stop.”

He needn’t have worried.

We needn’t have worried.

Something incredible has happened since that first day.

We’re in shape.

All the hauling ass back from the rifle range. All the laps around the track. All the wind sprints up and down Caisson Drive.

I didn’t know it was happening. None of us did. But while we were surviving one day, and then another, and then another, we were becoming damn near buff.

They give us a break after a few miles. The squad leaders are like doctors making rounds.

“Are you all right?” they ask. “How’s the neck? Are the knees holding up?”

Everybody gives a good report. Even Skebo. He’s like the rest of us. It hurt for the first hundred yards, but now he’s relatively all right.

DIs and troops blend in on the four-hour march. Cadence runs out. Rank runs out. There’s only walking. And talking. Earlier in the cycle, there was a gorge-sized chasm between cadre and troops. They had stripes on their shoulders and tenure out the ass. We knew nothing. We could do nothing. We had experienced nothing.

But now, this far into it, we’ve earned the respect of most of Alpha Company’s drill instructors. We’ve become accustomed to the long days. We haven’t crumbled under the physical requirements.

They react to this not by praise, but by gradually including us in their world. By talking about things within our earshot that they never would have done before.

We find ourselves abreast with two DIs from Delta Company — Butler and Greer.

Butler is one side of the road that leads to our bedtime and Greer the other. They can’t see each other — we shuffling pack animals are in the way — so they have to holler over our heads.

Butler asks Greer if he knows there’s been a change in M-16 training.

Greer says no.

Butler tells him a two-hour block of the move-out phase has been at least temporarily discontinued.

Greer asks if he means when the troops crawl toward the tower while live machinegun rounds are fired overhead.

Butler says yes. There was an accident a month ago at one of the other basic-training installations. As always, the men were told under no circumstances to stand up. Guess what happened?

Some kid jumped to his feet, Greer guesses.

Damn near blew his head off, Butler says. Died in the mud.

Stupid piece of shit got what he deserves, Greer concludes.

It is against that backdrop of concern for our fellow man that Robison’s Jeep arrives, going from 50 miles per hour to zero in the time it takes a cootie to shake a tail feather. Forget lather. If throwing gravel for a quarter-mile hasn’t given away our position to the enemy, I don’t know what will.

Bounding out of the still-smoking conveyance, Robison sees that we’re all still upright. There is nary an ambulance. Nary a stretcher-bearer. Summed up in language the SDI can best understand, our Achilles tendons are with the program.

He asks the least of us the proper distance between platoons on a tactical march.

“Fifty meters,” Peavey guesses.

A miracle has happened. He’s right.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit,” Robison drawls. “You boys are short, you know that? Real short.”

We need a translation. For six weeks, short has been like dicks. Bad. Coming up short in PT. Coming up short on payday because we earn less than what falls out of McNamara’s pockets. Now, all of a sudden, short is good.

“Goddammit, short means you can count the days you have left in boot camp,” Robison explains. “You used to be long and it was forever until you get out of here. Now you’re short.”

I thought we weren’t excited about anything other than falling asleep.

But I’m wrong.

“Short.” A troop’s voice rings out of the darkness.

Silence for a few seconds while crickets search for hidden meaning.

Then a veritable cacophony from the rank and file.

“Short!” The shout comes from the darkened depths of Echo Platoon.

“Short!” Bravo answers.

“Short! Short! Short!” Delta screams. Their harmonies are lousy and the men are hopelessly out of key, but you’ve got to cut some slack. It’s a live performance.

Robison isn’t a drill instructor any more. He’s a cheerleader, going from squad to squad and raising his hands like this is a pep rally.

“Louder,” he exhorts.

Charlie lends its voice.

“I said, louder, goddammit.”

Everybody screams, even me, the typist/observer from Alpha Platoon.

“Three more miles,” coach Robison calls out. “Got that many in you?”

Word spreads that no basic-training company at Fort Leonard Wood has ever made it to the bivouac site without at least one guy dropping out. It’s always something: Cardiac arrest, blisters the size of toasters, rigor mortis.

So this is why Robison is so worked up. He has a chance to make military history. Anybody can jump out of a plane at the South of France, or dodge one of Rommel’s tanks in the African desert. By God, he can get 200 ignorant assholes to their campground.

The SDI climbs on the back of the Jeep. There’s an hour’s march left. The men are tired. They need to be motivated. How best to do that?

Why, talking about pussy, of course.

“You troops wanna know what happened to me last night at Four Corners?” Robison asks.

The mere mention of that oasis of pleasure is worth a brigade of massage therapists.

“I’m standing against a pool table with a pecker just this side of a fire tower. All of a sudden this chick comes up and shimmies against my balls. I whisper in her ear that I’ll fuck her like a monkey. She says, you’d better, fool.”

Our pace quickens. We’re like first-graders straining to hear the day’s installment of “Jack Tales.”

“I’m taking things off as fast as I can. Jacket, shirt, pants — the polyester is flying, baby. But I slow down around my hard-on. Don’t want to unzip on that thing. This ain’t no time for sick bay.”

The troops want more, but Robison clams up until we’re 10 minutes closer to our final resting place. So this is how it’s going to be. We’ll have to earn it.

“She gets me in the toilet and puts rubbing alcohol on my tool,” he continues. “Real slow like it’s some kind of ritual. I’m wanting to fuck, but she goes over and over on that thing.”

Back in the Jeep. Another purposeful pause. We bust a gut to get to the next checkpoint.

“We screw like ABC Wide World of Sports,” the SDI goes on. “Up one side of the bed and down the other. I doze off for a few minutes and then she’s gone. I’m cool. I’ll just get back in line, right? But then I can’t find my underpants. I look under the bed. Under the stereo. Under the cans of pinto beans. I mean, I looked for them underpants. Nothing. They gone, man.”

Then he stops. The Jeep stops at the top of a steep hill. No matter. We practically climb over each other to get to the top. How is Story Time going to turn out?

“I give up after a while and pull my trousers on without ‘em,” Robinson says. “I go back in the bar and see a buddy of mine. I tell him about fucking this girl, and then not being able to find an important clothing item.

“He starts laughing and tells me it was Wanda. I ask how does he know. He says she’s damn near famous. We waits until you’re either asleep or passed out and then she steals your underwear. Some people collect rocks. She collects drawers.

“Buddy says Wanda has more than 400 pairs. Keeps the things in big trunks in her bedroom closet. She let him see ’em once. Guy said he’s never seen so many bloomers. Said it was like being at the factory outlet store.”

Skebo believes she keeps the souvenirs in case the tax man is in the back of the line.

“Probably flunked bookkeeping in high school, so she’s got to keep the math simple. After each trick, she makes off with the man’s underwear. At the end of the fiscal year, all she has to do is count soiled Jockey shorts.”

I have a completely different take on the situation. She’s only a part-time prostitute. Her real job is that of professional entrepreneur. The Soviet Union drops the bomb. The Midwest is little more than soot and ashes. Naked guys are stumbling around in the streets. Wanda sells the underwear on the black market. Makes a killing.

What’s this? Robison’s driver does something even better than stopping. He turns off the motor.

We have arrived at the Army’s KOA.

But nobody left the light on for us.

Visibility is about 12 inches. I only know that I have feet because they hurt. I can’t see them. The guy across from me could be Peavey. Could be Nixon.

Robison explains the rules for our slumber party. In a few minutes, he will turn on the floodlights so we can get our bearings. But they will go out after 30 seconds because we don’t want to give away our position. There’s that darn enemy again. Conversation is to be at a minimum. Moving around is to be at a minimum. If he hears any bitching about being forced to march halfway to Arkansas in the middle of the night, he’ll kick our goddamn ass.

The juice comes on. We see scores of toilet trenches from previous cycles. And corroded tops of C-ration tins. And toilet paper that may biodegrade one of these days but not in my lifetime. We pair off with our shelter-half pals and empty our packs before lights out.

I beat the tent stakes into the ground while Skebo uses his entrenching tool to carve out a toilet. Together we pull back, tie off and fasten until we have created a temporary housing unit that may or may not stand up if a 3-year-old brushes up against it.

He tries to fall asleep. I try to fall asleep.

It doesn’t happen.

For one thing, we’re filthy. The sandman won’t come if he has to wade through an expeditionary force of crud.

And we keep hearing noises like there’s a herd of wild animals a few feet away who are celebrating their fall festival.

Polecats for sure. And snakes. Poisonous ones, probably. And wolves. And bears, who are pissed because we brought M&Ms and didn’t give them any.

One night watchman won’t be enough to ward off the beasts. We’d both better stay up.

On the march, Skebo talked about slow-cooking sorghum, and drinking peyote tea, and getting plugged into a gig with the brush crew.

Ah, yes. Life on The Farm. That’s what will get us through the night.

“Rugged capitalism came to be exploitive,” Skebo says sagely. “The government started to push everybody’s buttons. The idle rich started to take over. The village is alternative to all that.”

There’s a rustling on our, well, porch.

“Uh, can I come in?”

It’s Carouthers.

“The doorman is temporarily indisposed,” Skebo replies. “You may let yourself in.”

He takes a seat in the corner next to the stacked rifles. There’s more than a hint of reefer in his exhale. And why not? The Army is engaged in the most non-Negro thing in the entire world: Camping out.

Carouthers grabs Skebo’s entrenching tool and twirls it like a baton.

“Still scared of me, ain’t ‘cha?”

If our heads bobbed any more, they’d come off. Baptists can backslide. So can big black men.

“Like I could kill you or something.”

Carouthers lays the thing down softly.

“Well, it’s bullshit.”

What’s bullshit? we want to know.

“Me.”

He asks if we remember when he told us about cutting the honky’s hand.

Skebo and I reply that we never close our eyes in the room without wondering if they’ve invented hand-reattachment surgery.

“Well, it didn’t happen.”

You mean you didn’t try to cut off a white man’s hand for feeling your forehead?

“Shit, no. I was scared coming to Fort Wood and…”

“You? Afraid?” I interrupt. “Somebody who could beat the crap out of the Green Bay Packers?”

He drops his head.

“That’s not me. That’s just the me I wanted you to believe.”

Our jaws have fallen until they’re in our chest cavities.

“I ain’t no tough guy. I ain’t no fighter. I work at the chicken restaurant and then I go home to Mama. The only thing I told you cottontails that was true was about the wrestling. Anything else about whipping somebody’s ass was just an act.”

Skebo and I don’t know what to say. All that with the tent stake. All that about us thinking we’d just give him the room and life out in the hall where it’s safe.

“You know how some animals puff themselves up to look big and all? Well, meet Mr. Blowfish.”

So everything has been a mirage. The knife. The menacing glances. The cracker factory.

“Yeah.”

I’m delighted to receive this new information and am ready to drop the matter. Unless there’s a major upset, I will leave this place with two hands.

But, naturally, Skebo presses for an explanation. Why tell us now? the sociologist wants to know. Indeed, why tell us at all?

“I don’t want to be the buck nigger no more,” Carouthers says. “I’m tired of trying to be somebody I ain’t.”

Carouthers starts to leave.

Skebo has one last thought.

“That word you used to call us. You know.”

“Motherfucker?”

“Yeah. You say it with such power, such conviction, that it’s almost an art form. I feel a sense of history here.”

“What do you mean, history?” Carouthers wants to know.

“That after all these weeks we may never get to hear it again. How about once more — just for old time’s sake?”

Carouthers is confused. First we didn’t want him to and now we do.

“You mean say that you’re motherfuckers?”

“Not just say it,” Skebo explains. “Feel it.”

“But you’re not,” Carouthers says. “I thought we cleared that up.”

I find myself urging Skebo on. It’s almost midnight and we’re beyond exhausted. Carouthers’ incantation might be just what we need to turn off our motors.

“If that’s what you want,” Carouthers says, “OK, you’re both motherfuckers.”

“No, no,” I say. “You got to project. You’ve got to reach down inside yourself.”

“You can do this,” Skebo says, giving the big black man a stick. “Pretend this is a tent stake.”

Carouthers hesitates.

“Please,” Skebo says. “It would mean a lot.”

Carouthers takes the stick.

“Project this, motherfucker,” he booms as he brings the stick to within an inch of Skebo’s face.

I merely applaud the performance. Skebo raves.

“That was a fortissimo motherfucker, quite possibly your best yet. I knew you could do it.”

“Aw, shit,” Carouthers says, embarrassed.

“Two more Caucasians, right?” Skebo chimes in.

“Aw, shit.”

Daybreak comes pouring through the top of the tent that we failed to fasten to the best of our abilities because there were spiders on it. The sun lights up our filthy faces and then commences to stabbing our eyes out. We surrender unconditionally. It’ll take time to fetch the white flag and do the paperwork. Should be good for two more hours’ sleep.

And it is.

The morning is decidedly low-key. The DIs must be having coffee at Denny’s. We awake on our own. Wonder where all the polecats went on our own.

There’s a chaplain if we want one, and guys we don’t know taking pictures of our tents and our stiff-backed attempts to exit them. Skebo says it’s for the cycle book we can buy after we graduate basic. There’s Pulitzer potential in our latrine trench, but they probably aren’t into nature scenes.

Litton makes the rounds, shaking hands and slapping backs like he’s the dean of alumni relations. Robison tells anyone who asks that we’ve been a half-decent cycle.

Where’s Haddox? The man should be here. He’s the Mr. March Long Distance Guy. He’s the Let’s See How Much Discomfort They Can Stand Guy.

I don’t even ask. Afraid to. Skebo does. Nobody will talk. But at least he spoke up. Maybe he should try for the job at the newspaper. Maybe I should just crawl up in a hole and just converse with worms for the rest of my life.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

“Ready on the left. Ready on the right. Ready on the firing line.”

Yes, yes, and yes. Let’s get it over with.

Assorted crackles, and then the loudspeaker in the cadre tower is up and running.

“You are here because you failed to successfully complete the record-fire phase of your rifle training.”

Like tell me something I don’t know.

“We are administering a makeup test of your record-fire training.”

Why doesn’t he quit reading off the sheet and just say that Peavey, me and 11 other bolos from Alpha Company are spending their Saturday morning at range 235 while everybody else is off-duty?

“To review what will take place.”

We don’t need a review. We can’t shoot. It’s that simple.

“You will fire at silhouette targets from 100 meters, 200 meters and 300 meters. You will fire from the prone-unsupported position and the prone-supported position using sandbags.”

Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it before.

“The targets will pop up in random order up and down your firing lane. They will only stay up a short time. You will be credited with a kill if any part of the round penetrates the target. Your total will be electronically tabulated in the control tower.”

You have to score 54 out of 100 to pass. I was 25 out of 45 on the first phase which wasn’t that far below the company average. But yesterday was like I had never seen a target before. I bombed away to the tune of 16 out of 45. I was way off on the 300-meter targets and only scored a few hits from 200. If you scored less than 50 percent, they let you fire again.

Which is why we’re here.

The last 10 rounds of BRM are at the night-fire range. Twenty-five meters, just like with zeroing. Tracer rounds are sprinkled in. The idea is to carefully watch where these go so you can better aim at the others.

What we keep hearing is that it’s all but impossible to hit more than one or two. You’d better be right at 54 when you get out there.

Right now I’m sitting on 41. I’ve got to push my numbers up so there’s not so much pressure at night fire.

So, yes, I’m nervous.

I run down my checklist.

The front sight is your friend. Do not abandon your friend at your time of need.

Do not sweat profusely. Your trigger finger has enough enemies already.

Do not get in a hurry. Think before you fire. And breathe. And pray. And be ready to swear to the range cadre that my targets malfunctioned, and how can I be expected to hit what didn’t rise up from the ground?

Do not think about bolt slider group. Do not think about cyclical rate of fire. Do not think about the horribly unfitting steel pot. Just think about bullets going through quarter-inch-thick soldiers with sufficient accuracy that you can get out of here.

We hear a medieval clanging from the tower, the signal that the targets have broken from the gate.

A 300 jumps up like a prairie dog. It wiggles with the wind and then goes back into its hole before I can get off a shot. Damn, this is going to be just like yesterday.

Then I hear an official-sounding voice behind me.

“Look to your right at 200.”

The M-16 and I obey. The almost-an-enemy springs to life. Because I had an extra couple of seconds to hone in on the thing, I make the kill.

I start to turn around to thank my benefactor.

“Keep your eyes front, son. This ain’t exactly legal. I’m Sgt. Gulletz with the cadre here. Waldspurger is my buddy. He told me you might need some help.”

Which would be telling me in advance where the malnourished soldiers are going to expose themselves.

I get early-warning notice on a 300 and actually hit it — my first time at that distance. I start to go into a dance, but having something on my head that weighs as much as an end table pretty much knocks the glee factor out the window.

“Extreme left at 100,” my helper whispers.

I nail it.

“Straight ahead at 200 just to the left of the bush.”

Gotcha.

“Get ready for a 100 on the dirt mound at the top of the hill at 10 o’clock.”

Own it, baby.

Keep this up and I’m the Cordite Kid.

Which, of course, doesn’t happen.

Of all the orders to obey at the range, “Cease Fire” is at the top of the list. Especially with bolos. But Peavey shoots not just once but twice after the command. It’s almost as if he did it on purpose. The cadre had ignored him for almost an hour. Can’t have that.

The DIs jump him quicker than white-hatted Texans on Jack Ruby. Pissed beyond belief, the loudspeaker guy orders Peavey off the range. Naturally, Gulletz is ordered to provide the escort service. No more help.

I think of grace under pressure. Hemingway. The ’69 Mets. Osgood standing firm outside the dorm mostly naked in an ice storm.

I can rise to the occasion. I can mount a comeback. I can cast my steely gaze at the targets and will them to go down.

Bullshit.

The steel helmet falls over my eyes. I miss a 200 trying to put it back on. A 300 pops up. I aim, breathe, pray and watch the round go into orbit.

I return to old habits. Sweating on the butt plate. Doing the cool jerk on the trigger. Having a front sight for decorative purposes only.

I hit most of the 100s, but they’re just sprinkled in to give the troops hope. If you want to return to civilian life, you have to hit the ones that are placed halfway to the Emerald City.

Which I don’t. No need for Dorothy and Toto to duck and cover.

The loudspeaker guy gets the scorecards from the control tower and passes them up and down the line. He’s decidedly downbeat as if one day we’ll all be in-country together and his life will depend on whether we can hit the broad side of a VC.

I scan my results. Twenty-six out of 45. A distinct improvement, but I still need three at night-fire.

Depression sets in. Gulletz pointed the way to a half dozen hits I probably wouldn’t have made. What am I going to do in the middle of the night?

Maybe I can put a flashlight on the front sight. Might as well use the thing for something.

In the CQ, there’s a note on the bulletin board. Haddox has been reassigned to a unit that trains infantry guys who are going to Vietnam. SDI Robison will become Alpha Platoon’s senior drill sergeant for the rest of the cycle.

Maybe in 20 years I can look back on this and realize Haddox was just trying to make us better than what we were. Doing his job, in other words.

But for now, a bully.

No other description need apply.

Dear Mr. Wesley,

I was thrilled beyond belief to receive your letter. Yes, I will come to work at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in three months after I conclude my active duty hitch. Yes, I agree to the salary of $90 a week. Yes, I agree to be a deskman trainee.

I want you to know that every Sunday I walk to Walker Service Club and read all the newspapers. St. Louis, Chicago, Oklahoma City. Even if they’re torn. Even if they’re a week late.

I may be a business major, but I understand that if you want to write good words, you need to read good words.

I told the guys back at the dorm that the day is coming when they will have to pay to read what I’ve written. Maybe just a nickel, but they’ll have to pay.

I told them it won’t be as convenient as me walking in their room, handing out my latest three-page humor article and standing over them with my guffaw meter.

They’ll have to go to the store, or put the coin in a rack.

And there I’ll be in that day’s edition with a story that came out of my typewriter. Maybe on the front page, but more likely on page 22 above the Gold Bond Cream ad.

But that’s OK. I’ll work my way up. What we observer-types lack in the social gadfly department, we make up for in busting our tails.

One of these days, Mr. Wesley, I’ll have my own column. Oh, it’ll take a while. Maybe a long while. I’ll have to learn to make stories true to life and not funny all the time. I’ll have to learn to put hop in my sentences like my idol, Jim Bishop. I’ll have to get better at trying that much harder when people say I stink.

Thank you, again. You won’t regret your decision.

Garret Mathews

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I’m a loser.

Again.

The thought hit to go off base for my first time to one of the liquor stores outside the main gate. I’ll buy a bunch of one-ounce samples for Skebo, Carouthers, Ya and whoever else wants to indulge.

I have never done anything at this place that could be construed as even a little bit wrong. I’m terrified of engaging in any act, however small, that could get me in trouble. And this would definitely qualify as trouble. We are forbidden from having alcoholic beverages in our possession. The penalty of running afoul of this rule is, depending on the source, going to the stockade or automatically getting recycled.

You’re supposed to confront your fears, right? So that’s why I hailed one of the ancient taxis that cruise the barracks on Saturday nights and told the guy I need to make a booze run.

The cabbie dropped me outside such a neon-screaming establishment. He was anxious for the return fare so I told him to pick me up in 10 minutes.

I walked past the beer and wine aisles right to the hard stuff. A box contained hundreds of one-ounce samples. I selected several bottles of vodka, gin, bourbon, whiskey and rum and put them on the counter.

And promptly lost my nerve.

What if the guard at the front gate decides I look suspicious, frisks me and finds the hootch? I envision Litton getting a late-night telephone call. He interrupts his supper, excuses himself from the wife and comes to our bay to personally serve the discipline papers.

Never mind that this almost certainly won’t happen. Unless there’s a dead body on the hood of the vehicle, the gate guard routinely waves all cabs inside the fort.

But I do not take the 0.0001 percent chance of being caught.

I return the samples and get back in the taxi for the return trip to A-2–2. I tell Skebo and Carouthers I’m sick and pull the blanket over my head.

Is this what I have to look forward to the rest of my life?